The Skeleton Road

  Father Begovic gave her a pitying look. ‘My child, I understand why you want to believe that. But there’s no escape from the truth. Mitja was responsible for those deaths. He was mad with grief. You must have seen the change in him yourself when you returned in the spring.’

  Maggie’s head came up, her eyes defiant. ‘Yes, I saw a change in him. He was under huge strain. He hardly slept. He hardly ate. He was enduring the pain of seeing his country under attack, his people being massacred and turned into refugees in their own land. He was suffering. But he hadn’t turned into the kind of monster who would orchestrate mass murder at somebody’s wedding. You’re wrong, Father. There’s been a mistake.’

  ‘No mistake, Professor. I am profoundly sorry for your pain. But we all have to face dark truths sometimes. And the dark truth about Mitja is that under the veneer he got from his education and his time with you in Oxford, he was as savage, brutal and full of revenge as all the generations of his ancestors.’

  ‘No,’ Maggie said desperately, her voice rising. ‘I won’t believe it. He was a gentle man. He was always sensitive to what other people needed. Open-minded. Open-hearted. Not the monster you’re talking about. Where’s your proof? How could a man like him, with his high profile in the Croatian Army, with NATO, with the UN – how could he get away with something like this with no comeback? It doesn’t make sense. The Serbs were always so sensitive about being portrayed as the bad guys, they’d have been all over an incident like this, making propaganda while the sun shines. A Croatian general leading a massacre? It would have been a gift-wrapped sensation for them.’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps because it was personal, and that was something they understood? Perhaps because they couldn’t complain about what Mitja did without admitting what they did first? Or perhaps because there was no evidence and, like you, nobody would have been willing to believe that the educated, civilised General Petrovic could do such a thing.’ There was a sting in Begovic’s voice and Maggie realised that he too was hurting at the thought that the man he’d helped to create had been capable of so terrible an act.

  ‘Still, it’s hard to believe nobody talked.’

  The priest frowned. ‘But they did. Not at the time, true, but a few years ago. A man and a woman came here. They were following up a report of the massacre from the Serbian end.’

  ‘What? Were they journalists?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, some kind of investigators. I think they had something to do with the war crimes tribunal. I didn’t inquire too closely. I thought it was best to seem indifferent. As if there was nothing around here that could possibly interest them.’

  ‘Didn’t they notice the memorial? Surely that would have been a bloody big clue that something very bad happened here?’ Maggie’s pain was starting to manifest itself as anger, but she didn’t care. She wanted answers more than she wanted this old man’s good opinion of her.

  ‘The memorial was not there. We erected it only two years ago, to mark twenty years since the deaths. We talked about it for a long time, but we were not ready before. So when they came, there was nothing to see.’ Again, he rubbed his hand over his face as if washing it. ‘We carried our hurt on the inside.’

  ‘These people, did they have names? A nationality?’

  He shook his head, defeated. ‘I don’t remember the names. It’s a long time ago and we were deliberately trying not to talk. As to nationality – I think she was British. She spoke English as if it was her native tongue. But definitely not an American or a Canadian. He was some kind of Scandinavian. But it doesn’t matter. Nothing came of it. It was little more than a rumour, he admitted as much to me. They didn’t have any eyewitnesses and they didn’t have any specific accusations against any individuals.’

  ‘So why did they come here, if there were no specific accusations? This is a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. What brought them to your door?’

  ‘The rumour said that the killers came from this village. Well, it was obvious to them when they saw the place that we didn’t have enough men for a raiding party. That this was not some armed outpost of the Croatian guerrilla movement. And they didn’t ask about Mitja by name. They interviewed me, and a few other villagers. None of us mentioned Mitja and they went away none the wiser. So by the time anybody said anything, it was ancient history and nothing came of it.’

  ‘Something came of it,’ Maggie said angrily. ‘Because Mitja’s dead.’ And if all this was true, a small voice inside her said, she might just be relieved.

  There are few places as beautiful as the Balkans in spring. Fruit trees in blossom, meadows carpeted with wild flowers, trees in leaf a hundred shades of green. Back in the early nineties, it was still common to see carts drawn by horses. Men with rolled-up shirtsleeves drove tractors that had the antique look of children’s toys, and I can remember occasionally even seeing oxen pulling ploughs. Women worked the fields, heads covered in bright scarves. Civil war was raging throughout Croatia, but depending on where you were, you could go for days without noticing. So it was that first time Tessa and I returned.

  When people think about war, they imagine whole countries consumed by conflict. The truth is that the battle lines are drawn patchily. Strategic targets are chosen and focused on. Particular towns are bombed and besieged while just a few miles down the road, life stumbles on in an approximation of normality. What else are you supposed to do if they’re not actually shooting at you, after all? We have an astonishing capacity for keeping our heads down and just getting on with things.

  Of course, beneath the surface, life was far from normal. Everyone was living in a state of anxiety. Would their town be next? Would some JNA commander decide their menfolk were too dangerous to remain alive? Was this the time to make a break for it and head for those distant cousins in Slovenia or Albania?

  Those were the conversations I wanted to be part of. When his military responsibilities claimed Mitja, which was more often than not, I spent my days finding people I could interview. I didn’t have a clear idea what I would ultimately write about the region, not least because I had no idea how bloody and brutal the next few years would become. But I knew I wanted to record as much front-line testimony as I could so that, when I did come to write, I would have a thorough spread of research materials.

  It wasn’t always easy to conduct these interviews. The first problem was the language barrier. Even after three months in Dubrovnik, my Serbo-Croat wasn’t really good enough for discussing abstract concepts. I could comfortably hold conversations about the day-to-day, so without an interpreter, I was limited in terms of what I could ask. Paradoxically, I think now that this turned out to be a positive thing. The work I ended up doing on the region and its wars is completely underpinned by the experiences of the local populations; it is rooted, as human geography should be, in an embodiment of the conflict.

  The second problem I had was persuading people to talk to me. I grew up in a country with a small population – there are just over five million Scots – so I understand what a friend of mine calls ‘half a degree of separation’. Everybody appears to be connected to each other. In Croatia, with its four million, that phenomenon is even more pronounced. It seemed as if everyone knew who Mitja was, and my relationship to him. That made some people eager to talk to me; but for others, it was a very good reason to avoid any kind of communication. But I knew I had to persuade the unwilling. If I didn’t cover the spectrum of experience and opinion, I couldn’t hope to produce work of any value.

  It was a challenge and I was glad of that because it meant I wasn’t spending my time pining for Mitja’s company. I knew he had an important job to do, even if he couldn’t tell me what it was most of the time, and I didn’t want to be the kind of pathetic camp follower who sits at home twiddling her thumbs. When we could be together, it was all the richer because my work meant at least one of us could talk about what we’d been doing all day. God knows he needed something to take his mind off the constant jockeying for p
ower on both sides of the battle lines. When I look back at that period, I have no idea how anyone kept track of the shifting sands of power and loyalties on either side. Somehow, Mitja held all that in his head.

  All that and more. Not only did he have to stay on top of what was happening. He also had to develop the intel to help his commanders create a strategy for survival for their country. He couldn’t go anywhere without bodyguards. We met in hotel rooms then, and whenever he came to me, there were always men with submachine guns on guard at either end of the corridor. If it had been up to them, they’d have been stationed on the threshold of the room. But that was where I put my foot down. Even generals are entitled to some privacy.

  Later, he wrote me a letter explaining that those moments snatched with me were what kept him sane. ‘I could see the guys around me starting to lose their grip. They’d been removed from any kind of normality for so long they’d forgotten the reality of what we were fighting for. All they had to cling to was the ideology. And that way you lose your humanity. You become the beast you’re fighting. You saved me from that. And because you saved me, I learned what would preserve and protect my guys. Although they didn’t want to leave the front, I made them take time away from the war. I sent them back to their families whenever I could. I think that’s part of the reason we were able to hang on against the overwhelming odds.’

  I’m proud of that now. At the time, I sometimes felt guilty that I was taking him away from what he should be doing. But not guilty enough to give him up. I remember one magical day in particular. Tessa and I were due to leave for Oxford the next morning, and somehow Mitja had managed to squeeze a whole afternoon away. We’d come down from Zagreb to Starigrad a few days before and he surprised us by turning up in a Land Rover. His bodyguards kept a discreet distance while we drove to the Velika Paklenica canyon nearby. ‘We’re going up the Anika Kuk,’ he told us. ‘It has the hardest climbing routes in all of Croatia.’ He must have seen the horror on my face for he burst out laughing.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’re not doing the rock climb. I know you don’t climb. There’s a walkers’ path to the summit, we’re going up that way.’

  ‘Some other time,’ Tessa said. ‘We’ll come back when the war is over, Mitja, and you can take me up the rock.’

  ‘That’s a deal,’ he said. ‘But all we’re doing today is enjoying the scenery.’

  It was the perfect day for it. Clear and sunny, but cool and crisp too. We started up the canyon, towering cliffs looming over us. Sometimes looking up at the overhangs was almost as vertiginous as looking down from a summit. We climbed steadily upwards, the wide path cutting up the steep mountainside in a series of zigzags. When we came to tumultuous streams tumbling over rocks and boulders, there were bridges to take us safely across. Although the scenery was wild, the terrain had been tamed for us.

  Or so I thought till we reached the final section, a steep scramble over broken cliffs and promontories. By the time we struggled to the summit I was exhausted, my thighs trembling with the effort. Mitja and Tessa both burst out laughing when I collapsed on my back, groaning, too knackered to appreciate the stunning views down the mountain and across to the coast. I was saved by the contents of the rucksack Mitja had been carrying – water, salami, cheese, bread, olives and apples. Water never tasted so good.

  After we’d eaten, Tessa set off ahead of us on the descent. Mitja and I sat on a chunk of rock, leaning into each other, talking about a future together. A future we imagined would arrive a lot sooner than it did.

  37

  Karen replaced her phone in her pocket and checked out Maggie and the priest. It looked like the conversation had gone downhill after she’d butted out. Maggie was on her feet now, edging into the aisle and away from Father Begovic. Karen took a few steps towards them, but Maggie met her halfway. ‘We’re done here,’ she said. ‘Whoever killed Mitja, the answer isn’t here.’

  Karen was inclined to agree with her. The conversation with the priest had recast everything in a new light. Petrovic as avenging angel, as war criminal – that was a very different picture from the patriotic hero and supporter of the peacekeeping NATO and UN forces that she’d been fed previously. And it was equally clear that it was as much a surprise to his widow as it was to Karen herself. How would that feel, she wondered. To discover that the man you loved, the man whose memory you cherished, was soaked in the blood of innocent people? How did you even start to integrate those contradictions?

  ‘Did he have anything else to say?’ Karen asked. ‘Like evidence? Like how this whole thing stayed buried all these years?’ She had to speed up to keep pace with Maggie.

  They were at the car before Maggie replied. She fastened her seat belt and said, ‘It stayed under the radar because it was personal. In the twisted calculus of death they use here, you don’t have to report a war crime if it arose from family circumstances rather than the furtherance of war.’

  The perversity of human illogic never ceased to amaze Karen. ‘Tell me you just made that up.’

  ‘I wish.’ She buried her face in her hands. Karen waited, understanding that it would be a bad move to start the engine and drive off. She didn’t think Maggie was actually crying, so thankfully she wasn’t going to have to go into compassionate mode when what she really wanted to do was to interrogate the professor.

  At length, Maggie raised her head and sighed. ‘Apparently word seeped out about eight years ago. A rumour from the Serb side. An investigator turned up and started asking questions. She didn’t know Mitja’s name and of course nobody told her. She could see this wasn’t exactly an armoured compound of highly trained and heavily armed guerrilla fighters so she accepted there had been a mistake and left.’

  Karen snorted. ‘Not much of an investigator, then. Did she not notice the graveyard on the way up the hill?’

  ‘The priest says that was only built a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Eight years ago, you said? So she was here before Mitja was killed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Karen could feel the pieces falling into place in her head. ‘So somebody was talking.’ She started the engine and turned the car around. Again, people materialised as if by magic, watching them leave as stony-faced as they’d watched them arrive. ‘Somebody was saying the words “massacre” and “Podruvec” in the same sentence.’

  ‘For all the difference it made. If Father Begovic is right, what happened is that one of the children of the victims grew old enough to carry on the feud to the next generation.’

  Karen pondered that for a moment. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. They rounded the bend and confronted the graves again. ‘Because —’

  ‘Please, pull over,’ Maggie said urgently.

  Karen drew alongside the grass verge and killed the engine. ‘I want to see his boys,’ Maggie said. She got out and walked across to the memorial, head bowed. Karen followed a few steps behind.

  At the plinth, Maggie scrutinised the photographs more closely than she had before. About halfway round, two photographs sat next to each other. Two boys, barely distinguishable one from the other. Cheeky grins, laughing eyes, a matching rumple of black hair. They had a sparkiness that reminded Karen of Phil’s nephew and made her think they’d have been a handful.

  ‘They look like him,’ Maggie said, her voice cracking. ‘He never wanted kids. Which suited me, because I didn’t either. Stupid woman that I am, I thought our reasons were the same. That we were sufficient for each other. That we had plans enough for ourselves, just the two of us. Not this. Not that he didn’t want kids because he couldn’t face the prospect of that much pain a second time.’

  Karen couldn’t think of a single thing to say that wasn’t banal. So she took another step forward and put an arm round Maggie’s tight shoulders.

  ‘How did he bear it?’ Maggie said softly. ‘How did he manage to carry that burden alone? Worse, how did I not notice? What kind of partner was I, not to see his pain?’

  ‘H
e chose not to let you see it, Maggie. And from the sounds of it, he was a man who knew his own mind. If you hadn’t been such a rock for him, he probably wouldn’t have got through it as well as he did.’ It wasn’t much of a consolation but it was better than nothing, Karen reckoned. Years of death knocks had made her proficient at ‘better than nothing’.

  ‘I can’t take it in,’ Maggie said. She patted Karen’s hand then slipped away from her, taking a last look around before she walked back to the car.

  They set off in silence. A few kilometres down the road, Maggie said, ‘What were you going to say when I asked you to stop? You said you didn’t think Mitja was killed by a member of the family he killed. Why?’

  ‘For one thing, Begovic was quite clear that Mitja said there would be no survivors to carry it on. And it was a wedding. You take babies and little kids to weddings as a matter of course. To believe his theory, you’d have to believe that there was a kid who survived somehow and that whoever brought the kid up also knew enough about the massacre to provoke the kid into taking revenge. Now, if they cared that much, why wait all that time? Why not just deal with it long before?’

  ‘Because it would be the kid’s vendetta, not yours. That matters, believe it or not. And because this is a region that invented the notion that revenge is a dish best eaten cold. There’s a school of thought that says the whole 1991 Croatian war kicked off because the Serbs saw their chance to take revenge for what the Croats did to them fifty years before. Round here, they still argue about whether they were better off under the Austro-Hungarian empire or the Ottomans. Trust me, waiting sixteen years to get your own back is a blink of an eye for this lot.’ Maggie’s bitterness was evident; Karen couldn’t help thinking she was enjoying a freedom of speech that being away from the university allowed her.